Naples – Sanita – Roman erotica at the Archaeological Museum

On the ground floor you can see a lot of mildly interesting statues from the Farnese collection, although I did quite like the bizarre creatures being petted by the statues either side of the main staircase. Please click on the photos to get an expanded slideshow.

On the upper floors are collections of artifacts from Pompeii and Ercolano, including many wonderful mosaics.

Raif asked me to comment on whether these are genuine or not. Such things were common in the Roman world, so unlikely they are fakes. I remember on one muddy site one of the diggers scraping the mud off his boots and finding a piece of decorated samian pottery in it with a depiction of two men in a compromising situation. Also a rather shy male friend who was showing a new female volunteer how to dig with a trowel. He came across a disk made of antler and when he flicked it over he was horrified to see an erect phallus on it. He quickly picked it up and put it in his pocket. When she asked what it was he replied ‘It’s natural’.